Weekly round-up: Australian soprano wins top honour, a new King and I for Australia and the future of recorded music

Nicole Car has won first prize in Neue Stimmen, Opera Australia announces the cast for The King and I and in South Australia, controversy smoulders over a new opera.

Opera Australia’s young principal soprano Nicole Car took out joint first prize in what is arguably the world’s most prestigious singing competition: Neue Stimmen 2013. Listen to her encore performance of “Tacea la notte placida/Di Tale amor” from Il Trovatore by Verdi and you can see why:

At home

Opera Australia has announced an impressive cast for 2014’s The King and I. The revival of Christopher Renshaw’s production will star Lisa McCune, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Shu-Cheen Yu and Adrian Li Donni. Opera Australia’s Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini said the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic is a timeless musical that contemporary audiences will relate to. Watch an interview with some of the cast and creatives here.

“If artists don’t explore the dark and troubling events of our time, who will?” – David Washington, InDaily

What do you think? Are tragedies within living memory appropriate material for new artistic works? Tell us in the comments.

Veteran British baritone-turned-director Sir Thomas Allen is directing a new production of Don Giovanni for Scottish Opera. He gives some interesting insight into Mozart’s “great antihero” in this interview with The Guardian’s Kate Molleson.

Deborah Voigt publicly scolded Spotify for advertising her recordings on her Facebook page this week. Digital streaming services stand to change the way we consume music – and more potential to disrupt income for artists than iTunes before it. For context, David Byrne wrote a great piece explaining the digital challenge here. It seems to be a question of perspective – the article quotes cellist Zoë Keating in defence of Spotify

Spotify is “awesome as a listening platform. In my opinion artists should view it as a discovery service rather than a source of income.” – Zoë Keating, The Guardian